Revista Amarello
- Jul 24
- 5 min read
*
Elena Landinez: A magical world between beauty and tragedy.
Text: Luisa Kiefer
If we could see inside whales, what would we find? And what would be inside a dolphin? Are they made up only of their own bodies, the water that surrounds them, and marine debris, or are they also made of flowers, poetry, and other beings? And what if we imagined that they carry within themselves a universe of their own?
I dare say that what the artist Elena Landinez portrays is, in a way, a place of " what if... ". A space permeated by imagination, made of dreams and sensitivity, yet without ever disconnecting from daily life and the real, tangible, and urgent problems of today. Landinez imagines, but she imagines based on what she sees and what she encounters.
We are living through a climate emergency – unfortunately, a phrase that seems to have lost its impact and become a cliché, due to its frequent repetition. Most scholars affirm that we have already passed the point of no return. Our forests, seas, climate, and natural beauty will not return to what they once were. It would be necessary to stop all human activity impacting nature now – something we only partially witnessed during the worst moments of the global COVID-19 emergency. Therefore, it is crucial to insist on this point, to look at nature and not see it as different and distant, but as a constituent part of who we are.
It is in this context that the Colombian artist's drawings, paintings, and collages deserve our attention. They take us on a journey through the water, the beings that inhabit it, the ships that pass by, and all sorts of materials discarded there. But, unlike the brutality, pain, and anguish we feel when we see wildfires, droughts, polluted rivers, and climatic storms, what Landinez offers us are delicate, colorful, and joyful works, vibrant like a dream. It is accurate to say that her poetics is an invitation to think of new paths through her imagination. More than a critique, it is a call to dream together, to invent.
Since arriving in Brazil and settling in Salvador, Landinez has lived facing the sea. Her relationship with water, in fact, began in childhood. Originally from Barranquilla, a city in northern Colombia, the artist was born and raised on the banks of the Magdalena River, one of the country's main rivers. The river flows into the Caribbean Sea, making this region surrounded by abundant water. Therefore, the maritime and fluvial world was significant in her development. It was and still is part of the landscape that inhabits her days and is what nourishes her inner world.
Walking along the beach is part of her daily routine. During these walks, which are part of her daily comings and goings, she collects objects, stones, and things that end up being transformed into her works of art.
“I feel it’s like an archaeology of everyday life, picking up useless things , objects, stones, trash, and making large collections of them. It’s mapping places and creating imagined cartographies. But my relationship with the sea also has to do with a place in the unconscious, because it appears a lot in my dreams,” says the artist. “And, in real life, it’s as if I take these small signs that come from this somewhat oracular place, there’s not much explanation, so I bring that in and create these somewhat enchanted beings, things that I call impossibilities , but that are possible,” she adds.
Landinez believes that the artist's tool is to give life to things that are impossible. It is from this thought that his drawings of whales, dolphins, and sea creatures carrying private universes in their bellies – the "Ship Beings " – are born; or the cargo ships that transport much more than containers, such as plants, flowers, and animals; or even beings that are half animal, half boat. "I think creation is in human nature. It's about bringing what you imagine to real life," he declares.
These are drawings that literally blend the imaginary with what actually exists. Poetic constructions that reveal the complexity of relationships: nobody, and nothing, is just one thing. A ship is an iron shell, but it is occupied by people, travels the oceans, transports goods from one country to another, and is part of a capitalist system that governs current society. Perhaps it could carry more beautiful worlds or less harmful goods, as the artist suggests. Just as an aquatic animal is a marine being, lives submerged, eats other fish, swallows what we improperly discard, and could also feed on poetry, why not?
Similarly, there are drawings with and on stones – stones on whose surfaces, if we look closely, we can see microparticles of plastic that have adhered, over time, to the porosity of the mineral – and works composed of collections of objects collected from the beach and the sea. In these, the socio-environmental concern becomes a little more evident, even if at first glance one is not certain where so many objects came from. It seems somewhat improbable, or absurd, that a cassette tape, a toy gun, headphones, a VHS tape, a pencil sharpener, a mechanical pencil, a wooden metric scale, in short, that all of this was found in the water – either because it was lost there or because someone decided to discard it in the sea.
Landinez says she enjoys creating with trash, as it's a way of showing reality. At the same time, the artist also highlights the fascination with plastic, which is colorful, functional, and never ends, never disintegrating, even with the action of saltwater and time.
“We are living this reality of pollution, and it’s incredible to observe people and the smallest things, which sometimes nobody sees. On my daily commutes – going to the bank, taking my children to school, putting something in the mail – I walk along the beach and observe this place between beauty and tragedy. How can there be so much plastic in the sea?” the artist asks. “I like to pick up trash and I think a lot about this word: trash. What is trash? What is this throwaway culture?”
There are more questions than answers.
These are Landinez's questions. In fact, we produce waste all the time and don't think about the fate of things after they are consumed. Where does everything we discard go? The artist emphasizes that there is no planet where the trash goes and disappears; it accumulates in places that our eyes often don't see, for example, at the bottom of the sea.
She understands that her work is a way of showing the beauty that exists within this chaos. "It's a somewhat disgusting world, but at the same time it's beautiful," she says. "It's a place between what is unpleasant, which we sometimes overlook, and the place of poetry, of enchantment, because life is also like that, isn't it? Made of these two things."
This entire universe, which in Landinez's hands becomes more magical than sorrowful, was the subject of the artist's first solo exhibition, Ventanas de mares , held at the Instituto Cervantes in Salvador in March of this year.
As soon as I encountered her work, a quote from the French filmmaker Agnès Varda came to mind: “If you open a person, you will find landscapes. If you open me, you will find beaches.” I like Varda's poetic assumption that it would be possible to open someone up and find what forms them beyond the human body. When an artist produces their work and shares it with others – whether through film, literature, or visual arts – they do this process naturally, allowing us to see their inner world. With her works, Landinez offers us an amalgam formed by doses of attentive and conscious observation, rationality in relation to the world around her, mixed with sensitivity, imagination, touches of lyricism, and a bit of the dream world.
Text originally published in Amarello magazine, Water edition.
